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Friday, 1 January 2016

December 2015 Net Worth: $715,000 (+2.1%) and Goal Tracker

Another month and another year have gone by and I'm incredibly happy with house this month and this year have panned out. Not everything has gone to plan especially in relation to this I couldn't control (like the stock market) however having a plan in place for my own personal finances helped me whether some pretty tough conditions to come out far ahead of where I originally thought I would be.

Enough of the nostalgia and onto the numbers. Below I have provided the usual summary of my net worth however I have gone into far more detail than I usually do on my goal tracker given I have just completed my goals for the year.

Net Worth: $715,000 (+2.1%)

Value

% Change

Assets

$1,121,000

+1.1%

Liabilities

$406,000

-0.7%

Net worth

$715,000

+2.1%

This month I had hoped to increase my net worth to $705,000 so I was pleasantly surprised to see it increase far more than that. Some of the increase was driven by large factors but a lot of it was just grinding along and following the plan I have laid down for myself.

Some of the key factors which affected this month's performance included:

The allocation of part of my bonus

Last month my bonus was paid and I saw a really large step up in my net worth. Due to timing issues however I couldn't actually count all of my bonus last month because I didn't know the value of certain non listed securities I would be issued

This month I got allocated these securities and on an after tax basis it added approximately $4,000 to my net worth

Continued saving into my offset account

One of my savings goals for 2015 was to save for our next home and so every month my wife and I continue to save a portion of our income towards this goal

We are also renovating our current home at the moment so unfortunately the net impact is not always as large as the amount we actually save

The share market picked up slightly and I put more cash to work when it was down

Over the month the share market picked up slightly however it was a rocky ride. When it was particularly low I bought some resources index funds. So far that was the correct decision to make but the the whole market is incredibly volatile at the moment and I have no idea where it is going to go from here

Continued saving into my employee share plan...but no savings into superannuation

My employee share plan continues to be a valuable automatic savings tool for me and due to my wage increase in the last month (unfortunately it was only around the rate of inflation this year) I actually contributed more this month than in the previous months

Due to a quirk in the superannuation rules my employer didn't actually make a superannuation contribution this month as I hit my contribution cap for the quarter when my bonus was paid. This happens every December and is a bit of a pain

Future liabilities decreased to $11,000 from $13,500

My future liabilities decreased this month as I continued to renovate the house. I may have to top this up soon as our plans have significantly expanded compared to what we had originally planned

Over the last 12 months my net worth has increased by $147,000 which is pretty mind blowing especially given that in that time I bought my sports car, got married, went on my honeymoon, moved into and furnished a full house and had a ton of other expenses. There were a couple of big one off increases that helped this performance (including a revaluation of my home). I am incredibly happy with this performance and if I'm going to be completely honest the higher I go the less important the actual number becomes...but that is something for another post.

December 2015 Goal Tracker

Wow...I've finally gotten to the last goal tracker for this year. Some of my goals for 2015 I met and exceeded while others fell a little short. The summary is below and then I thought I'd do a brief roundup of each of the goals in turn.

Goal

Dec 15

2015 Total

2015 Target

Remaining

Achieved?

#1: Get Married

+$0

$5,000

$5,000

$0

YES

#2: Honeymoon

+$0

$20,000

$20,000

$0

YES

#3: Home Deposit

+$4,750

$83,647

$40,000

$0

YES

#4: Emergency Fund

+$833

$10,000

$10,000

$833

YES

#5: Share Portfolio

+$10,953

$259,209

$276,000

$16,791

No

Goal #1: Get Married (Cost: $5,000)

I had done most of the saving for this goal before the year actually started and I just had the final hump to cross and I did that quite quickly which was very pleasing

For anyone that is interested we ended up spending just over $40,000 on our wedding

Goal #2: Fund Honeymoon (Cost: $20,000)

I hadn't really started saving for my honeymoon at all before the year started but my then fiance and I devised a plan so that we could save for this in as short a time period as possible and we stuck to this as each month went by

We ended up spending just over our budget on our honeymoon which I was pretty pleased with

Goal #3: Save for our new home (Cost: $40,000)

Given all the other things we had to save for this is what I thought was an achievable amount to aim for when it came to saving for our new home

We far exceeded this and ended up saving nearly $84,000 due almost entirely to the very generous wedding gifts we received from our family and friends

Goal #4: Establish an Emergency Fund (Cost: $10,000)

I've never really felt the need for an emergency fund however as I am starting to settle down I thought this would be something that we would need over time and it was best to have it right up front

$10,000 should cover us for about 2 months of expenses should we both lose our jobs or it can cover any large unexpected hiccoughs along the way without actually hurting our investment plan

I'm glad that I have saved for this...I don't think it needs to be any larger for the moment and I no longer need to save for this going forward

This is the one goal I missed by quite a long way for several reasons. Firstly I de-emphasised this when my wife and I decided that buying our next house should be our priority so other than my employee share plan I didn't contribute anything additional to shares

Secondly the Australian share market absolutely crapped itself over the year and I was hurt pretty badly by being in high beta stocks

This is all part of investing in the share market and my emphasis in the current year will be on cleaning up my portfolio and treating it like a business in it's own right.